Actress Cecilia Gentili, 52, died on Feb. 6. Gentili was well-known in the New York LGBTQ+ community for her trans activism and her advocacy for people with HIV/AIDS. A former sex worker herself, Gentili was also a stalwart advocate for sex workers.
Gentili, was, like Pope Francis, a native Argentinian. She was raised Catholic and her friends organized a funeral Mass to memorialize her at the iconic St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Feb. 15. The church had been the site of numerous ACT UP protests during the AIDS crisis. Those who attended said it was a beautiful service, attended by more than 1,000 people. The service included a performance by Tony and Emmy-winning actor and singer Billy Porter. Gentili had met Porter when the two were castmates on the TV series “Pose,” about New York’s ballroom culture and the AIDS epidemic.
Rev. Edward Dougherty, the priest who served at the funeral Mass at the Manhattan church, said, “Welcome to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Except on Easter Sunday, we don’t [usually] have a crowd that is this well turned out.”
Gentili’s family, friends and a few celebrities applauded, with some chanting “Cecilia.”
The New York Times said, “The service was an event that most likely had no precedent in Catholic history. The pews were packed with mourners, many of them transgender, who wore daring high-fashion outfits and cheered as eulogists led them in praying for transgender rights and access to gender-affirming health care.”
One eulogy, a video clip of which was widely shared online, remembered Gentili as “Saint Cecilia, the mother of all whores,” to the thunderous cheers of a nearly full cathedral.
After videos from the funeral and news reports from CNN and other news and social media outlets were shared online, there was backlash from conservative Catholics.
The conservative group CatholicVote called the funeral “unbelievable and sick” and “a mockery of the Christian faith.” The Rev. Nicholas Gregoris, a co-founder of the Priestly Society of Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman, called it “revolting,” a “blasphemous & sacrilegious fiasco” and “a deplorable desecration of America’s most famous Catholic Church.”
The Very Rev. Enrique Salvo, pastor of St. Patrick’s, issued a statement that St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the seat of the Archdiocese of New York, was “deceived” into hosting the funeral mass. Rev. Salvo called Gentili’s funeral “scandalous” and said St. Patrick’s “had no idea our welcome and prayer would be degraded in such a sacrilegious and deceptive way.”
Rev. Salvo said, “That such a scandal occurred at ‘America’s Parish Church’ makes it worse; that it took place as Lent was beginning, the annual forty–day struggle with the forces of sin and darkness, is a potent reminder of how much we need the prayer, reparation, repentance, grace and mercy to which this holy season invites us.”
Rev. Salvo announced that the cathedral would, at the direction of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, mitigate the “scandal.” “At the Cardinal’s directive, we have offered an appropriate Mass of Reparation.”
New York Archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling told The Washington Post that Salvo’s statement was about “the behavior of some of those in attendance at the funeral — including comments like ‘the mother of all whores’ or changing the words of the ‘Ave Maria,’ a sacred hymn, to ‘Ave Cecilia’ to cite just two examples.”
This response from the New York Archdiocese would seem to contravene all of Pope Francis’s recent dictates to be welcoming and embrace LGBTQ+ people within the church. Francis has made particular outreach to trans people, who the church has historically ignored or demonized.
Funeral organizers told CNN that they chose to honor Gentili at St. Patrick’s Cathedral because they “felt its grandeur was a fitting tribute to her legacy.”
Ceyenne Doroshow, who helped organize the funeral and said they had been friends with Gentili for over 20 years, told the Washington Post the funeral was critically important not just for Gentili, but for the community as a whole. They said, “When thousands of people showed up, it showed the magnitude of love for Cecilia and set a precedent that our community will stand strong together.”
Doroshow acknowledged that some attendees had been “guided to stop” their choices, like someone who danced in the aisle and sang over the “Ave Maria,” but also said, “Look, it’s an unprecedented funeral for an unprecedented icon.”
Katia Perea, another friend and organizer was succinct in saying that nothing about the service was meant to be mocking or disrespectful of the setting. She said, “There was no incident when anyone said anything disrespectful about the church or God or Jesus.”
Perea said the archdiocese’s objection to the reference of Gentili as “St. Cecilia, mother of all whores,” was not only not disrespectful, it was a tribute to Gentili’s activism. Mary Magdalene is referred to in the gospels as a prostitute — or whore — yet was Jesus’s closest friend.
Perea explained, “Whore was used as an identifier for Gentili because she was a sex-worker advocate. The word was used in complete acceptance of that identity, as someone to be loved, respected and deserving of the same rights as anyone else.”
Doroshow said when asked for more information about Gentili prior to the service, they told the archdiocese, “I said she is a sex worker advocate, an icon and an activist. And then I told them to Google her, because she’s quite famous.”
Gentili’s gender identity was not disclosed to the church, Doroshow said. They explained, “If a cisgender person’s family organizes their funeral, does their family tell the church that they were cis? If not, why is that being asked of us?”
Perea said, “When I first met her, I wondered if this is how people felt when they first met Dr. King. I would follow her anywhere. She was always the smartest and funniest person in any room.”
In a statement released on Twitter/X, Gentili’s family criticized the archdiocese’s response, saying the funeral brought “precious life and radical joy to the Cathedral in historic defiance of the Church’s hypocrisy and anti-trans hatred.”
The family said, “Cecilia Gentili’s funeral … was a reflection of the love she had for her community and a testament to the impact of her tireless advocacy. We bestow sainthood upon Cecilia, for her life’s work, for how she ministered, mothered, and loved all people regardless of HIV, immigration, or employment status.”
They said, “Her heart and hands reached those the sanctimonious Church continues to belittle, oppress, and chastise, and she changed the material conditions for countless people, including unhoused people and those who needed healthcare. The only deception present at St. Patrick’s Cathedral is that it claims to be a welcoming place for all.”The day before the funeral, archdiocesan spokesperson Zwilling said that “a funeral is one of the corporal works of mercy,” a part of Catholic teaching the church has described as “a model for how we should treat all others, as if they were Christ in disguise.”